^{Originally published on BabyCenter.com November 15, 2013}

I’ve been in hibernation for a couple of weeks as my body adjusts to the sudden lack of sleep and deprivation of freedom that accompanies any newborn.

It is, of course, totally worth it.

In one way, adjusting to a second child is like getting back on a bicycle after a long break. Barring something unusual, it’s all been done before. All you need to do is adjust your body to fit the new sleep schedule and get used to changing a lot of diapers again. On the other hand, there is a major monkey wrench thrown in there, and that monkey wrench is called the firstborn.

Two-year-olds love to play and require a lot of attention. It can sometimes be tough to give them the care you need if you’ve got a fragile newborn sleeping in your arms. Fortunately, it does seem that there are ways to let the oldest child adjust to the second-born.

In our case, our son gives us a major leg up in this regard. He’s always been a pretty easygoing kid, and that hasn’t changed over the past couple of weeks. He did have a bit of a rough time knowing that Mommy wasn’t in the house around his bedtime when she was in the hospital, but he adjusted to that well, accepting my explanation that Mommy was taking care of his sister and would be home in a couple of days.

My wife and I did ourselves a favor or two with the way we built the new arrival up for our son. We had a home doppler kit, so he could listen to the baby at night before he went to bed. We’ve delayed potty training for the time being, since he’s got enough transition to deal with right now. The one big change we did make was taking away his crib and moving him to a big boy bed. This happened a month before our daughter arrived and was built up with such fanfare that it became a major event on par with going to see a hockey game or sitting on Santa’s lap.

We also did some work on emphasizing that having a new baby sister is not going to be all fun and games, which probably helped him a lot. To this end, we picked up a copy of Sheila Sweeny Higginson’s You’re Getting a Baby Sister, which is good for emphasizing the fact that while having a new baby in the household is great, it might also cause some frustration from time to time. For a positive but realistic look at what children can expect from their new siblings, I recommend this book a lot.

The words “big boy” have been used quite often during the transition, with his stature as the older brother who is responsible for showing his sister the ropes being driven home through that phrase. At times I worry that we might be using it too much, but he seems to accept the idea of more responsibility with excitement rather than trepidation.

Possibly as a result of the emphasis on being a big boy, our son has taken on quite an independent streak, refusing help most of the time unless it’s clear he can’t do something. He won’t let me pick out his bedtime books anymore, instead insisting on pulling them off the bookshelf himself. He doesn’t accept help climbing into bed or onto the couch, and he doesn’t even like me cutting up his food all that much. It’s pretty good fortune that his newfound independent streak has come right around the time when we need him to handle things himself so we can take care of the baby’s needs.

At the same time, we have done our best to make sure he gets special time with both parents. My wife gets time where I take the baby (no matter how resistant the little girl is to being away from her mommy for even a minute) so she can read and play with our son. Not being the person who the child attaches to in order to feed, I naturally have plenty of opportunities to provide some Daddy Time – at least until I get dragged kicking and screaming back to work.

Again showing off what a big boy can do, our son has been keen to help out with the baby as well. He’s told her it’s okay when she cries, he’s read her bedtime stories, and he provides her with her pacifier when she needs it.

I don’t know if it’s just the developmental stage he’s at, whether emphasizing the responsibility that comes with being a big boy has really hit home, or the fact that our son is just generally awesome, but he’s handled the transition very well. While he still has to wait his turn sometimes because we’re both occupied with the baby, he’s more a help than a burden. As a whole, that’s helped us ease into the second child phase quite well.

Now if I can just get our darned cat to be as cooperative…

_{Featured Image: Celebindiaworld, CC BY-SA 4.0, resized and cropped}